Opening Keynote Speaker
Monday, November 23 | 8:45 – 10:15
Janice Stein
Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management,Founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Renowned as one of Canada’s most respected national and international experts on world politics, Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and the founding Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. She is an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and an inaugural Trudeau Fellow. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorate of Laws by five universities around the world. In 1996, Stein became a University Professor, the highest honour the university accords its faculty. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Kissinger Centre at School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
She chaired the Advisory Committee to the Minister of Foreign Affairs on Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. She also Chairs the International Advisory Board of the Halifax International Security Forum.
Her research sits at the intersection of cognitive science, psychology, and international politics as she focuses on decision making and strategy. The author of eight books and more than a hundred articles, her most recent work is on the management of escalation and the psychological, institutional, and political factors that explain surprise. Her latest research focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and technology.
She is a regular contributor to The Bridge, Friday Focus, and the Paikin Podcast, as well as to CBC and the BBC.
Closing Keynote Speaker
Wednesday, November 25 | 12:15 – 14:30
Ihor Korbabicz
President, Abacus Data
Ihor Korbabicz has a rare talent: he can take a 40-slide deck of polling data and leave an audience laughing, nodding, and, most importantly, remembering what it all means. As President of Abacus Data, one of Canada’s most sought-after public opinion and strategy firms, he spends his days figuring out what Canadians really think, and his time on stage translating it into something people can actually use.
Ihor’s presentations are known for their humour and for metaphors you won’t see coming, the kind that make a dense set of findings suddenly click. Behind the levity is a deep understanding of Canadian politics and of the issues keeping Canadians up at night. He draws on that context to shape every presentation around what matters most to the audience in front of him, so no two talks are quite the same.
Over more than 15 years in public affairs research, Ihor has designed and led studies that informed political campaigns, rebrands, reputation management, and crisis communications across sectors. Today he leads Abacus’s operations and research consulting practice, helping governments, campaigns, corporations, and associations make sense of complex data when the stakes are high. He’s equally at home in a focus group room and a regression model, and he’s at his best connecting the numbers to the strategy.
Ihor holds a Bachelor of Public Affairs and Policy Management and a Master’s in Political Management from Carleton University.
